
The team

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Amy Oyekunle is a gender and development professional with over 15 years’ experience in gender-based violence, adolescent girls, feminist and gender research, women peace, and security in Nigeria. She is the CEO of Monii Development Consult (MDC), a research and project management organization providing short and long-term technical assistance in Nigeria. Amy has worked with Foreign and Commonwealth Office, UN Women, Federal Ministry of Women Affairs, International Alert, Save the children, the British Council, WaterAid and Sahel Consulting and Nutrition. Amy has a Masters degree in development studies from University of Leeds, UK, and a Bachelor of Science in sociology from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.
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Lokpriy Shrma is a postdoctoral fellow at Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy – University of Saskatchewan and a research associate at Northern Policy Analytics (NPA). Lokpriy specializes in the economic and labor market, strategic public policy development for gender equity, and inclusion research and analysis. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Saskatchewan with a doctoral dissertation exploring federalism, intergovernmental relations, and public policy decision-making. Trained in economics, political economy, and public policy, he has over ten years of economic and gender research and analysis experience working in Canada, the USA, and India. Lokpriy has been awarded several prestigious fellowships over the past few years, including the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship.
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Heang-Lee Tan is a women’s rights advocate from Malaysia. She has served as the Head of Campaigns at the Women’s Aid Organisation, Malaysia’s largest service provider for domestic violence survivors. There, she spearheaded a campaign on stalking, which resulted in the Malaysian government’s commitment to criminalizing stalking. Through working with survivors of gender-based violence, she saw the need for a gender-responsive approach to health care that respects women and upholds their dignity. This experience led her to pursue an MPH at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she hopes to delve deeper into gender analysis of health systems.
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Mariela Rocha is a postdoctoral researcher at René Rachou Research Institute – Fiocruz Minas, part of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Minas Gerais, and the assistant project coordinator of the Brazil group for Gender and Covid-19 research. She has experience in research on political behavior, political institutions, gender, and interdisciplinary research. Mariela has a Ph. D. in Political Science from the Federal University of Minas Gerais, with a period as a visitor Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin.
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Samira Karsiem graduated from the University of Toronto in 2018, where she received an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Health Studies. She is currently pursuing her Master’s of Public Health at Simon Fraser University. Her research interests include women’s health and mental health, with a focus on achieving equity in these areas through policy development. In 2019, Samira worked as a researcher on youth employment in Senegal with EQWIPHUBs and Canada World Youth. She also volunteered as a Community Connector at the Guelph Community Health Centre. As a keen public health student, Samira has been following the developments of the COVID-19 situation closely, and looks forward to contributing to the Gender and COVID-19 Project as a Research Assistant.
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Anne is an applied public health researcher with over five years’ experience in providing technical advice in designing and implementing research studies and pragmatic facility and community-based interventions / programs, with a focus on:
- Prevention and Response to Violence against Children (VAC) and Violence against Women and girls (VAW/G)
- Strengthening service delivery to address VAC/W/G including child protection systems at community, facility and national level in resource limited settings.
Within national and county TWGs on GBV/VAC and Social Protection of children and other platforms in Kenya, she has contributed to contribute to development of VAC/G/W related policies, training curricula and service delivery standards for VAC/W/G prevention, and design and implementation of national survey on child violence.
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Alice Murage, MPP, is a Research Fellow in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the Simon Fraser University supporting the Gender and COVID-19 Research Project. She is keen on applying research as a tool for understanding social issues and policy impacts, and contributing towards progressive policies. Alice has previously worked with civil society organizations addressing gendered vulnerabilities in Kenya, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Canada. She has led research projects investigating government policies and initiatives aimed at supporting parenting in Cambodia, and the role of civil society organizations in promoting women’s political participation and effectiveness in Myanmar. In her spare time, she actively works with grassroot organizations to promote inclusion of marginalized and racialized groups. She draws inspiration from diversity in cultures and perspectives, and thrives working collaboratively.
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As the Managing Director of Pamoja Communications, Kate has extensive experience in working with research partners and consortia in the creation of strategies and plans, by brokering engagement and dialogue with stakeholders and their networks, creating attractive and impactful communication products and with targeted dissemination. She is adept at translating academic research into communication products for a wide variety of audiences, such as the public, practitioners and policy makers. She is an experienced writer with 18 years of experience of communication work in the NGO, academic and private sector. She has created and managed many websites and online platforms to house and celebrate research findings and partnerships. Kate has supported partners to improve the demand-side of research communications – engaging with policy makers and practitioners throughout the research process, brokering partnerships between academia and government, supporting capacity development for evidence use. Kate is coauthor on some of the most authoritative papers on gender and health systems in the field and has written a guide for health systems policy makers on how to apply an intersectionality gender lens to their work.
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Germaine Furaha is Lecturer in economics at the Université Evangélique en Afrique (UEA-Bukavu) in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She is also Director of the Centre of Excellence Denis Mukwege working on research and action around the status of women, the promotion of women’s leadership and peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She works on women and girls’ access to resources and benefits in the context. Germaine Furaha oversees the research in the country (with focus on South-Kivu, North-Kivu and Kinshasa Provinces).
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Tahera Ahsan is an economist, with over 8 years of research and analysis experience at the national policy level with expertise in fiscal, social policy (social protection and gender issues) and governance issues in the Bangladesh and regional economies. She has substantial experience in developing social protection and gender strategy, evaluation of social policy programs, design, development and implementation of latter, at the very rural and grassroots level as well as at the national level. She has worked as technical expert for UN and other donor agencies and her work has been published in government publications along with international publications.
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Sara E. Davies PhD, is a Professor of International Relations at Griffith University and an Adjunct Fellow at the Monash University Gender Peace and Security Centre. Sara was an Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2014-2019). Her research focuses on Global Health Diplomacy, Human Security, and the Women, Peace and Security agenda. She is author of Containing Contagion: The Politics of Disease Surveillance in Southeast Asia (2019) and Global Politics of Health (2010), and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook on Women, Peace and Security (2019, with Jacqui True).
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Chukwuemeka Eluemunor, MSc is the Country Director for Innovations for Poverty Action – Nigeria. He has more than 14 years of experience providing research and results measurement support to development programs in Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda. He has managed research and evaluations across several areas including women’s economic empowerment, agriculture, access to finance, micro enterprise, investment potentials and mobile money. Mr. Eluemunor is also experienced in designing and managing the implementation of poverty reduction interventions.
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Huiyun Feng, PhD is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Government and International Relations at Griffith University. She is a former Jennings Randolph Peace Scholar at United States Institute of Peace and Co-CI of a three-year MacArthur Foundation project, “How China Sees the World”. Her research area is foreign policy analysis. She currently works on female leaders and foreign policy.
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Karen A. Grépin, PhD is an Associate Professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong. She is a health economist and a health systems researcher. Dr. Grépin’s research focuses institutional factors affecting the demand and supply of health services, the politics and effectiveness of development assistance for health, and the role of routine health information systems in strengthening health systems. She has a PhD in Health Policy (economics) from Harvard University and an SM in Health Policy and Management from the Harvard School of Public Health.
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Moumita Islam is an anthropology graduate from BRAC University. She is currently doing her Masters in Development Studies from BRAC University. She is working as a Research Assistant in several projects at BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University. Previously she worked at BBC Media Action as a Research Assistant and BRAC Center for Peace and Justice, BRAC University. She is equally interested in both quantitative and qualitative research. She has expertise on conducting qualitative research, ethnography, participant observation, developing questionnaire, interview guidelines, conducting in-depth interviews, key informant interviews and focused group discussion.
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Naila Kabeer, PhD is joint Professor of Gender and Development at the Department of Gender Studies and the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research and teaching interests include gender, poverty, labour markets, social protection and citizenship; much of her research focuses on Asia. She was previously a Professor at London University and is an Emeritus Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex. She has published extensively, supported regional training and advisory work with governments, international and bilateral organizations and NGOs, and serves on several boards and advisory and editorial committees.
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Selima Sara Kabir is a Research Associate at the BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University where she combines her love for writing, honed over the years with her experience writing for local newspapers and at university, with her passion for anthropological research, which blossomed with her decision to minor in the subject during her undergraduate studies. Her research interests lie in exploring the nuances of gender and sexuality in intersection with adolescent health, sexual and reproductive health care and rights, and ‘netnography’, the use of the internet and technology as a tool for qualitative research.
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Kelley Lee, PhD is Professor and Canada Research Chair in the Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University; and previously Professor of Global Health Policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Trained in international political economy and public administration, she has led major projects on global health governance, global outbreaks and the tobacco industry. Her current projects include compliance with the WHO International Health Regulations during COVID-19, measurement of the commercial determinants of health, and support of BC First Nations communities in commercial tobacco control. She has published 15 books, 200+ papers and 70+ book chapters.
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Gustavo Matta is a full researcher in public health at the National School of Public Health Sérgio
Arouca – Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Coordinator of the Zika Social Sciences Network at Fiocruz. He is
currently developing studies on COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil and Latin America related to narratives
and vulnerabilities, and representing Social Sciences initiatives of Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in
international forums such as WHO. He is coordinating the axel Social Impacts in the Fiocruz COVID
Observatory. He has experience in the field of Public Health, with an emphasis on Health Policies and
Planning, acting mainly on the following themes: health emergencies and reemergences in low- and
middle-income countries, primary health care, health care policies and global health policies. -
Rosemary Morgan, PhD, is an Assistant Scientist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the Department of International Health. She currently leads the Sex and Gender Analysis Core for the NIH funded Sex and Age Differences in Immunity to Influenza (SADII) Center and works as a Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) advisor for the UK Partnerships for Health Systems programme (UKPHS). Dr. Morgan is also an advisor on the CIHR funded project exploring the gendered effects of COVID-19 in Canada, the UK, China, and Hong Kong, and co-coordinates the Gender and COVID-19 Working Group.
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John Mungai is a Research Coordinator at Innovations for Poverty Action – Kenya (IPA). He has more than six years of experience managing development research projects across different sectors including Development Economics, Education, Cash Transfers, Health, Governance Initiatives, and Intimate Partner Violence. He is currently managing a portfolio of impact evaluations across Health and Development Economics. Prior to joining IPA, Mungai worked as a Research fellow on the Wrigley-funded, School Health and Nutrition Program aimed at providing school children in and around Nairobi with paths to improved health and nutrition, and avenues for behaviour change.
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Valerie Mueller PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Arizona State University School of Politics and Global Studies. She also spent a decade as a research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute. Dr. Mueller’s research focuses on quantifying rural household vulnerability to climate variability; fieldwork to identify mechanisms to improve rural service delivery in East Africa; and youth employment prospects in Africa. Her research contributions have been featured in numerous academic journals and received significant coverage in over 15 major media outlets. She remains involved in the field working with donor communities, local policymakers, and government officials.
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Denise Pimenta is an anthropologist and researcher at René Rachou Research Institute – Fiocruz
Minas, part of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Minas Gerais. She’s one of the coordinators of the
Zika Social Sciences Network, member of the Fiocruz Social Sciences COVID Observatory and one of
the coordinators of the COVID Social Impact research project funded by the Brazilian government.
She is currently coordinating with Clare Wenham (LSE) and Gabriela Lotta (FGV) a Bill & Melinda
Gates funded research project about gender norms in vector control programmes, women in science
and COVID-19 gender issues, especially among health workers. She has experience in the fields of
health education, health anthropology, social aspects of tropical/neglected diseases and health
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Atonu Rabbani, PhD is an applied microeconomist with research interests in health, labor, and organization economics. He has worked extensively on a number of research areas aiming to understand how knowledge, awareness, perception, monitoring, and incentive can motivate human decision making. He has widely published in both national and international peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Rabbani is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Dhaka and an Associate Scientist at the James P Grant School of Public Health at the BRAC University. He has studied economics at the University of Chicago and the University of Dhaka.
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Sabina F. Rashid, PhD, is Dean (since 2013) and Professor at the BRAC School of Public Health, BRAC University. She is medical anthropologist and was trained at The Australian National University, Australia. She has over 25 years of work experience with expertise in ethnographic and qualitative research. Her research interests include gender, sexual and reproductive health, sexuality, urban poverty and human rights; the well-being of adolescents, urban poor, youth and marginalized populations. She is a member of Bangladesh Health Watch (a citizen’s health watch group), and is actively engaged in advocacy work. She established the Centre for Gender and Sexual and Reproductive Health & Right in 2008 and co-founded the Centre for Urban and Equity Health in 2013, at the School. She has 90 publications (peer reviewed journals, book chapters, reports, etc).
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Erica N. Rosser, MHS is a Research Associate in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the Department of International Health. She has extensive research experience in qualitative and quantitative methods, including for the evaluation of complex public health interventions in low- and middle-income countries. She also has a demonstrated history of project management/coordination and effective collaboration with national institutions and bilateral and multilateral organizations.
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Julia Smith, PhD, is a Research Associate in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University. In addition to currently co-leading the Gender and COVID-19 Project, she has played a lead role in projects on the role of civil society in the response to HIV/AIDS, the political economy of the tobacco industry and Indigenous Peoples’ health. Dr. Smith’s research interests include social, political and commercial determinants of health, gender-based analysis and participatory methods. She has worked with civil society organizations in North America, Europe and Africa. She was a Rotary World Peace Fellow at the University of Bradford
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Adrita Rahman is a budding economist with a keen interest in public policy, income, wealth, gender inequality, sexual and reproductive health, and rights as well as female labour employment. She has over 2 years of work experience as a Research Associate at BRAC James P. Grant School of Public Health and two years of work experience as a communications manager, campaign planner, content writer, and curator in start-ups. Additionally, Adrita has brief experiences as a project coordinator, research assistant, and research intern.
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Clare Wenham, PhD is Assistant Professor of Global Health Policy at London School of Economics and Political Science. She specialises in global health security and pandemic preparedness and outbreak response policy. Her work considers global health governance, national priorities and financing pandemic control. More recently she analysed the downstream effects of global health security policy on women, with a forthcoming OUP book offering a feminist critique of the Zika outbreak in Latin America. Her work features in several academic journals. She previously worked at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, delivering surveillance and transmission of infectious disease projects.
Gender Working Group
We meet online on the third Wednesday of every month to discuss key issues, activities, opportunities, and ideas for collaboration. We have a long and growing list of resources on gender and COVID-19.
Gender Working Group
We meet online on the third Wednesday of every month to discuss key issues, activities, opportunities, and ideas for collaboration. We have a long and growing list of resources on gender and COVID-19.